Typical desktop Linux is compiled with gcc and even if rust features in gcc lag behind rustc this is still a great step in the direction of one of the larger goals many of us want from rust which is to replace C as a memory safe systems language for OS kernel and embedded projects.

A big part of getting a sane environment to build rust Linux modules is having it easily integrate with the gcc toolchain.

There seems to be some contention around if this is a good idea for rust as a language itself and my counter to that would be that there are billions of people on the planet and the work integrating rust into gcc doesn't detract in any way I can see from the continued development of rust as a language, it just helps to make it more viable for many use cases and therefore increase it's footprint and overall support.